The First World War and European Integration

The importance of the First World War in European integration history has been understated. Before 1914, intensifying economic integration had not brought corresponding political integration. But once hostilities broke out, Germany pursued indirect economic and military domination over its neighbours and a Central European economic association based on agreements with Austria-Hungary. The drive for the latter had little success, because of Germany's own uncertainties as well as Austria-Hungary's resistance. From 1916 the French government also pursued the goal of border buffer states, together with a permanent inter-Allied economic bloc, but was likewise unsuccessful. Nonetheless, the wartime experience helped to shape later integration initiatives during the inter-war years and even beyond.     

德国史学家关于第一次世界大战战争责任问题的争论

在德国史学界,关于第一次世界大战战争责任问题一直是有争议的。20世纪20-30年代,主要针对《凡尔赛和约》的相关宣判,一部分德国史学家编辑出版了大量外交档案,极力为德国开脱责任,从而在国际上引起激烈争论。20世纪50年代末、60年代初,汉堡史学家弗里茨.菲舍尔以其论述德国战争目标的论文,对德法两国一度达成的一致意见提出质问,再次引发激烈争论。这些争论既与国际国内政治局势的变化密切联系,也与参与者的政治态度和民族情感息息相关。时至今日,不同观点依然存在,只是研究重点发生了明显转移,研究方法也出现了较大更新。     

A Family Business: The Bartholomews of Edinburgh in the First World War

This article examines the lived experience of the Bartholomew family of Edinburgh during the course of the First World War. Families, as much as nations, empires and other communities, were important participants in the conflict that collapsed the boundaries between the various battlefronts and homefront like none before. The Bartholomews’ letters to one another were the chief means by which the shared experience of total war was mediated and constructed, as well as a vital source for ascertaining the role played by the family in their nation’s war effort. In them, we can see the way unpalatable truths were concealed beneath literary tropes, drawn from the language of glory and sacrifice, but also the way such sentiments were real and deeply felt to a generation not yet experienced in the cynicism and sarcasm that the war occasioned in the English language as much as the mind. These letters also represent a form of organically created propaganda that sustained the Bartholomews’ morale and commitment to the war effort, and also their collective identity as a family unit, despite the scattering of parents and siblings from Edinburgh, to Flanders, and northern Italy.     

论二战期间澳美军事同盟关系的建立

20世纪澳大利亚外交和防务政策演进的一个主要特点就是在保持与英国传统关系的同时,寻求美国对澳的安全保护.二战以前,由于受制于澳英隶属关系以及美国对外战略的价值取向,澳美关系难以取得突破性进展.第二次世界大战是对国际关系产生重要影响的事件,战争的特殊背景不仅使得澳美正式外交关系得以建立,而且因出于反击日本侵略的共同需要,两国结成战时军事同盟.澳美军队联合作战不仅扼制了日本的侵略气焰,而且建立了相互合作与信任的机制.这就为战后澳美同盟关系的缔结奠定了基础并提供了范式.     

Tangible Patriotism during the First World War: Individuals and the Nation in British Propaganda

This article explores several propaganda campaigns aimed at British civilians during 1917. Through examples from campaigns for War Savings, Food Economy and National Service, it argues that propaganda in this crisis year was as much about identifying small, tangible, contributions that individuals could make to the war effort as about more sensational accounts of enemy wrongdoing. Propagandists targeted all sections of society, offering children and some women new status through war work, promoting attractive working conditions for others, and reminding the wealthy of the social responsibilities that their greater economic freedom carried in wartime. The article suggests that the consensual, voluntarist approaches promoted during 1917 remained an important precursor to possible forms of compulsion.     

Eye in the sky: visual geographies and emotional topographies of First World War airmen

Although the First World War highlighted human vulnerability through the terrors of a mechanised warfare ravaging the male body in new ways, it also fostered moments of intimacy and tenderness that privileged commonality, mutuality, and generosity, and encouraged friendship and comradeship as cornerstones of martial masculinities. This article explores such intimacies through analysis of letters and diaries written by British Royal Flying Corps airmen during combat on the Western Front. Informed by history of emotions approaches, I discuss the ways the sensual geographies of aerial combat and their promise of mastery and expanded vision shaped the emotional topographies of airmen’s combat lives. Following Santanu Das’s scholarship on the claustrophobic haptic geographies of trench warfare, this article addresses the following question: If the claustrophobia of the trenches and the impoverishment of visual experience facilitated certain geographies of senses that shaped male intimacies, what might similar emotional terrains look like for airmen exposed to more expansive visual practices?     

The politics of memory: Commemorating the centenary of the First World War

This symposium examines how the centenary of the First World War has been marked in five countries: Australia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. Given their distinctive national historical experiences and political cultures, the metanarratives of the war in these countries differ; as does the relationship between the state and sub-state actors in memory making. However, in each case the commemorations of the war have been shaped by a negotiation between the state and other agents of memory at the sub-state level. National memory has also been consciously projected into international relations, through carefully orchestrated anniversary ceremonies and performative memorial diplomacy. But, despite these transnational commemorative practices, the centenary of the war remains predominantly framed within local and national imaginings.

这次研讨会议论了一战百年在奥地利、法国、德国、英国、美国这五个国家是如何庆祝的。考虑到各国不同的历史经验以及政治文化,这些国家关于一战的元叙事各不相同,国家与次国家主体关系的记忆也是如此。不过,每个国家的战争纪念,都是国家与其他次国家层面主体协商的结果。通过精心策划的纪念仪式日以及表演性纪念外交,国家记忆被有意识地投射到了国际关系之中。除了这些跨国纪念活动,一战的记忆主要是在地方以及国家的想象框架内形成的。     

Disease,Microbiology, and the Construction of a Colonial Space: Romania and the Central Powers in the First World War

Microbiology, developed in the decades before the First World War, encouraged a particular vision of disease and human social relationships. Some of the consequences of that can be seen in the way in which the Central Powers engaged with Romania during combat operations and during the occupation. Much as with colonial approaches to disease in tropical Africa, parasitology encouraged Germans to focus on bacteria and vectors of disease rather than on social relations or indigenous humans. As a consequence, medical care was segregated: it focused on protecting occupiers, and encouraged Germans to construct Romania and Romanians as colonial.     

Keeping the Spiritual Home Fires Burning: Religious Belonging in Britain during the First World War

The religious impact of the First World War on the home front in Britain is assessed in terms of churchgoing and church membership and affiliation. Church attendance rose briefly at the start of the war but fell away thereafter in the Protestant tradition, accelerating a pre-existing trend, which was not reversed after 1918. The disruption caused by the war to the everyday life of organized religion probably accounts for the decrease, rather more than loss of faith. Church membership also declined during the war in the Anglican and mainstream Free Churches, albeit not for other denominations and faiths, but it temporarily revived after the war. This was not the case for non-member adherents and Sunday scholars whose reduction was more continuous.     

第二次世界大战期间的旅欧华侨

据中华民国侨务部门 1935年的统计 ,当时旅居欧洲的华侨近 4万人。然而 ,时至30年代末 ,当战争乌云在欧洲大陆上滚滚翻卷之际 ,上万欧洲华侨为免遭战祸 ,匆匆回国。因各种原因而留居欧洲的华侨 ,与欧洲人民一起在漫天战火中度过了六年的艰难时光。本文追溯旅欧华侨在二次大战期间艰苦而顽强的求生历程 ,并展示旅欧华侨与欧洲人民共同抗击法西斯而留下的一页鲜为人知的华章     

The Holy War in Syria: Cemal Pasha and the Ottoman Plan to conquer Egypt in the First World War

This article aims to analyse the importance of the Egyptian campaign to Ottoman policy in the First World War. It seeks to add to our knowledge of the Ottoman war experience by putting the focus on the empire’s preparations for conquering Egypt and by giving priority to understand the aims of the expedition. The expedition itself is placed within the context of the jihad policy adopted at the beginning of the war and which sought to put an end to the Entente’s colonial domination of Muslim countries. The Ottomans’ propaganda initiatives in support of the measures were meant to motivate support among the Syrian population through the idea of holy war.     

The Politics of Provisioning: Feeding South Asian Prisoners During the First World War

During the First World War, the German and British Governments supplied culturally appropriate rations and secured special facilities for food preparation and consumption for South Asian prisoners of war whose loyalty both governments sought. The food provided in POW camps to South Asians serves as an index of the political status of colonial subjects at a moment when the future of European empires was far from certain. The British Government’s approach to feeding its South Asian servicemen held by the enemy thus reveals this population’s place within Britain’s wartime national and imperial imaginary and in its post-war planning.     

一战华工的归国境遇及其影响——基于对山东华工后裔（或知情者）口述资料的分析

山东淄博周村是当年英法招募华工的重要站点。论文根据对＂周村华工＂后裔或知情者采访整理出来的65份口述资料,从华工归国所带物品、节余工薪的使用状况、归国后从事的行业、思想观念与自身素质的转变等方面进行了考察研究。比照当时知识界和政界对于归国华工影响力的乐观预期,得出结论：华工归国后的总体境遇不够理想,归国华工对中国社会所能发挥的积极影响极为有限,甚至其中不乏悲剧性的一面。     

浅论一战期间的赴法华工及其婚姻

一战期间,法国女多男少的现实、华工对配偶的需求促使不少华工与法国妇女结为夫妻,而法国政府错误的婚姻政策及急功近利的遣返华工政策又在客观上起到了推波助澜的作用。北洋政府为了维护国内的伦理秩序及与法国的外交关系,采取了一些限制华工婚姻的措施,但受制于其法律制度的自相矛盾而不能很好地解决问题。     

Growing up in the shadow of the Second World War: European perspectives

In this Special Issue, the authors explore the various ways in which the Second World War shaped children's experiences in the post-war period. They map the multifaceted interest or non-interest of states all over Europe for children in the years after the war, filter out groups of children who recall that the consequences of the Second World War significantly influenced their childhood, and investigate the childhood policies directed towards them, as well as their childhood experiences and the memories they foster about their childhood. In addition, they have included case studies from Western, Central and Eastern Europe with the aim of sparking a debate as to whether it was only a similar lifecycle that war children in early post-war Europe shared, or if they also had some life experiences in common.     

Austria-Hungary,Unrestricted Submarine Warfare,and the United States' Entrance into the First World War

This study shows that Austro-Hungarian policy toward the United States of America was in winter 1917 not primarily dictated by its German ally but by the sober evaluation of its own interests. The separate peace, which was offered by the Wilson administration, was not a realistic foreign-policy option for the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Therefore, this article shows why Austria-Hungary did not accept US peace feelers. On the other hand, it also demonstrates that in the winter of 1917 Washington did not treat Germany and Austria-Hungary as equals, with the latter being in a better position. But the monarchy's acceptance of the German course in the submarine war strengthened the perception of the monarchy as an appendage of the stronger Germany in the United States, and finally caused great damage to its reputation across the Atlantic.     

Introduction: Marginalised Histories of the Second World War1

This special issue, stemming out of the AHRC-funded Teaching and Learning War Research Network (2017–2020), is published at an important juncture in cultural memory: as the focus of public commemorative events in Britain and the Commonwealth shifts from the First to the Second World War, including the Holocaust. Not only does it showcase exciting and cutting-edge research, but it also aims to stimulate conversation and ‘forward-thinking’ about commemorative cycles over the next two-and-a-half decades (2025–2045). The three research articles and four provocations focus, in different ways, on the question of ‘hidden histories’ in the expectation of a need to ensure that diversity, multi-perspectivity, complexity, and contention remain at the heart of ‘national’ commemorative processes (whether in Britain or elsewhere).     

HMS Falmouth: addressing the significance of a light cruiser lost in the First World War off the coast of Yorkshire

HMS Falmouth is the only known wreck of a Town Class light cruiser, which were ‘arguably the best cruisers of the First World War’ (Lyon, 1977c: 49). This article reports on a project to better understand the significance of the wreck and to raise public awareness of the heritage of the First World War at sea. Although the wreck is heavily degraded it is still of considerable importance, raising methodological questions about the role of multibeam survey and 3D visualization, access to archival material, and the characteristics of archaeology as applied to 20th‐century warships.